Posted on 09/27/2017 6:17:05 AM PDT by Hostage
Repeal the 17A and curtail scotus.
You can have your opinion.... I am not sure the facts bear that view point out...
He and his wife and family were and are very honorable people... by making the above statement, you are by default trashing his families honor to feed a rumor... not even a rumor.. a half baked idea, feed by the internet...
If he was assassinated, do you think his children and wife would just sit quietly? Protective services do nothing? Local LE sit quietly? He did have heart issues... for years.
You can also host such debates with the 17th Amendment repealed. The candidates can make their case in front of the legislators, and the voters can watch and petition their legislators to vote according to their will, depending on what they find out. (Prior to the 17th Amendment, the political party duopoly had an iron grip on the legislatures.)
You would need an amendment to reduce SCOTUS to what it was originally intended to do: follow the law and the Constitution. Unfortunately, the Court arrogated to itself judicial review, which was quite useful in certain cases like Heller, but absolutely horrible in the cases of Roe v. Wade and the Obergefell decision.
Of course, the duopoly still has a grip on the legislatures, but my specific point was that each party could credibly punish its legislators who voted for “the other guy”, effectively nullifying any say the people might have with the legislature.
Let’s start with an over activist SCOTUS Add to it a corrupt congress plus an over bloated bureaucracy follow that with communists in the government since at least the forties
Always good to focus on an academic thesis that has little to do with reality
Exactly right... We need our Senator to be concerned about the wants and needs of the State and people he represents, not the DC machine....
I was fairly certain you wouldn’t bother to educate yourself and click the links I provided. I was right.
With the power of recall, the voters can easily nullify any candidate advanced by their legislators, and they can apply for preemptive recall on a list of candidates in preparation for an actual recall vote. They do this by simply gathering signatures on recall petitions with names inserted and announcing they are ready to go forward.
No legislator is going to vote for a candidate they know will be recalled on day one of their appointment.
Prior to the 17th Amendment, there were show elections or show votes of US Senators by the electorate in much the same way that presidential elections are show votes because the President is not elected by popular vote, and for good reason, but rather by the Electoral College.
These show elections for US Senators were never binding. The straw that broke for the 17th was not some ‘sacred’ right to vote by the electorate but rather the chaos reported among newly forming western states, especially as some states refused to even seat their US Senators leaving the US Senate an incomplete body. All that was needed was time and patience but a populist uprising later taken up by the US Senate itself forged through the issue of a binding popular vote for US Senators. This was a mistake in 1913, as were the 16th and 18th Amendments. Some call this era of US history the beginning of the Progressive Era but it is more aptly described as the Era of Recklessness as these 1913 amendments were all poorly conceived and considered.
Research of periodicals of the time reveals the invention and growth of radio and telephone had a great deal to do with the agitation of the population to fixate over these poorly thought-out amendments. Many US historians and scholars of the time tried to warn of the folly of these amendments but the new means of communication allowed people to think they had found a better way.
Tearing down the state’s ability to elect its own representatives to the US Senate via the 17th Amendment violated the principle of decentralization that is essential to a Republic. Yes, there was statehouse corruption and yes, there were sellouts, but not on a scale that warranted wrecking the US Constitution’s structure for a Republic. As it is now, a US Senator is nothing more than an ‘Uber’ Congressman or Congresswoman. There is no need for a US Senate that is elected by popular vote. The House suffices for representing voters. The design for states to be represented was demolished by the 17th. To refer to a US Senator as the Senator from ‘ZZ’ is a farce. Today, that US Senator is the Senator from Alcoa, from IBM, from Dupont ...
What happened after 1913 was a gradual and near complete centralization of all power in Washington DC with a ‘fog of distance’ separating citizens from their US Senators. It was far better to have a local government, the statehouse, act as a known local body that could control its US Senators. The voters certainly can’t organize effectively to throw out an incumbent in the US Senate although they may try but almost with certainty fail because too many persons and businesses are made dependent on the incumbent or the incoming opposition is aligned by the same interests who control both parties.
Roy Moore is an exception, not a rule. If the Alabama statehouse was considering appointing Strange as its US Senator, it is a near certainty that the 28h Amendment above would have Alabama’s voters with a recall application ready to go so that Strange would never be seated. That is the power of recall. Alabama’s legislators would quickly know who was favored by Alabama’s voters just as the pre-1913 show elections indicated who was preferred, only the pre-1913 voters did not have the power of recall. The 17th Amendment should have been the granting of the power of recall and term limits but no doubt the JP Morgans of the time saw the 17th popular vote as a means to grab power in Congress because voters would be given a choice of ‘R’ or ‘D’ and both of the choices would be backed by monetary powers.
Controlling interests care not for ‘R’ or ‘D’, they care only that control is absolute, and if not, they will back an opponent they select. These powerful interests may lose on occasion but statistically, they win. It is never completely left to the voters to decide, there is no truly populist candidate running for US Senator, at least not in reality. Sessions, as a US Senator had a populist following with a belief in his patriotism and some of it, was true as long as it was not at odds with those that controlled him. And he was indeed controlled as a US Senator on issues of importance to those that could make or break him.
Each US Senator is controlled by special interests. There are no independent free thinkers in the US Senate. The 17th was used to evolve a structure that allowed this control of US Senators. Should one US Senator fall out of favor or become unpopular to the point of not being able to sink his opponent through smear, innuendo, entrapment, then his/her opponent would become owned/backed or a replacement would emerge. This was the dynamic during the pre-1913 era as well but the difference was that the controllers were provincial and not national or international in origin.
The point is the voters have no real power other than to vote for one of the two-party candidates put before them like a menu at a restaurant, both prepared by the same group of chefs. Nor do the voters really know who they are voting for as all the candidates are completely scripted or should be or eventually will be if they are to survive. The only way a voter can know their US Senator is by observing the fruits but even in this, there are shell games as mentioned above with reference to parliamentary tricks.
The only way the voters can hold their US Senators accountable is through the power of recall, the power to ‘fire’ the Senator. An effective way to impede and stifle the tendency for wealthy interests to exert control of the US Senate is to set term limits and the only way to deconstruct and decentralize the massive Administrative State that evolved from the 17th is to repeal the 17th.
No. I just don’t agree with you or the author at the link
bump
An amendment that “takes away the right to vote” will never pass.
An amendment that lets State Legislatures prescribe the method of choosing Senators (appointment vs. election) might possibly pass.
Recall by Legislatures or referendum is a good idea - but again, I would devolve the choice of recall method to the State Legislatures.
> “An amendment that “takes away the right to vote” will never pass.”
Voters will still have the right to vote, but for recall, not election. They will have the right to fire, not hire.
Voters know they don’t know who they are hiring, but once the US Senator is hired by the state legislature after repealing the 17th, the voters can fire the US Senator through recall if that US Senator sells out and is not first fired by the state legislature. A US Senator would then have two camps to be accountable to, the state legislature and the state’s voters.
It is quite feasible to persuade voters to trade their right to hire for a right to fire. It will take work but when they see the benefits of doing so, they will get onboard with it. The argument is already advancing and the movement is gaining steam. It just takes a little time for the lightbulbs to turn on. No rights are taken away that are not replaced by more powerful rights and benefits.
> “I would devolve the choice of recall method to the State Legislatures.”
State legislatures are historically just as susceptible to following a path of corruption as are Members of Congress. Human nature is the same in both settings but state legislators are closer to the voters and find it near impossible to run and hide whereas the humanoids in Congress are well-insulated by distance.
Some state legislators in pre-1913 America found it profitable to sell their vote to appoint a US Senator to wealthy interests and then step down and retire. Numerous accounts exist in the periodical archives of state legislators appearing at show-vote rallies, promising voters to appoint their choice for US Senator and then later doing the opposite.
A recall power (of US Senators) at the state legislature level and a separate independent recall power (of US Senators) among the state’s voters provides a check on corruption in the statehouse just as a recall power for the statehouse allows for it to demonstrate leadership and relevance. A recall of a US Senator by voters indicates the statehouse has failed the voters, but the voters nonetheless have the ultimate means to hold US Senators accountable.
Again, the basis for repealing the 17th, for providing for term limits, for providing for recall powers is to reverse the deterioration in American culture brought about by the decades advance of federal encroachment on every aspect of living in America. It takes a while to see this evolution from 1913, but once people get it, they don’t forget it.
If you can convince people to surrender their right to vote for senators, more power to you!
But I don’t have much confidence in such an idea getting popular. So we need workarounds at the same time.
With the power of recall, the voters can easily nullify any candidate advanced by their legislators ...
Ah, legislator appointed and voter nullification!
I like that. But I still don’t think we’ll ever repeal the 17th.
We most definitely should make recall votes easier.
Good thinking.
FRegards ....
The 17th, like the 16th, was insidious.
The 16th was implemented in a flat tax covering 14 short pages.
The 17th was never enacted into a code. Instead, it culminated in massive federal bureaucracy that released far more codes than the IRS. Think about that.
The 16th took the form of enforcement code,
The 17th took a hidden path to pushing out federal government contracting code.
CFederal contract codes cite applicable laws that were pushed through by Senate committees without any state involvement. Therein lies the impetus for massive federal government growth.
Repeal of 17th will happen when the issues are properly framed and presented. People will be persuaded that their vote for US Senator is pretty much meaningless, but their vote to nullify/recall is powerful and effective. Voters will make the trade eventually. It takes time for the light to shine.
The House of Representatives is the closest to the voters. We get to replace them every two years.
If the Electors to the Electoral College are required to cast their vote for the Presidential candidate who received the majority of votes in each Congressional District, rather than statewide winner take all, The President in the vast majority of cases would be the same political persuasion as the House of Representatives at the time of the election.
If we do not get rid of the 17th Amendment, we really need term limits, and recall capability. Without these two capabilities, international conglomerates large special interest groups select and control our government.
The Convention of States is a very necessary step in restoring our American Republic.
If the 17th Amendment did not exist, a Convention of States would be easy to call. Senators do not want to limit their power, nor limit their terms.
The Convention of States is a very necessary step in restoring our American Republic.
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